Time Freedom Video Transcript – I Have a Small Budget, What Should I Outsource First?

It’s Melissa Ingold from TimeFreedomBusiness.com. I want to address a question that has come up a lot about budgeting. A lot of people dive into outsourcing with a small budget – I know I did, I know a lot of people do.

When You Have a Small Budget, What is the Ideal Thing to Start Outsourcing?

Obviously, there is no one right answer, there’s no specific thing that I can tell you, but here is what I do know.

You are going to want to sit down and you’re going to want to track your tasks for the next few days. I highly recommend about a week. You’re going to track your time doing everything. If you’re posting content on Facebook, if you’re writing an email to your list to send out, if you’re formatting your newsletter or posting content to your blog, editing videos, whatever it is you do for the next few days, I want you to write it down and log how much time it takes you to do those things. Then you’ll be able to get a really good overview of the stuff that has to be done in your business on a fairly regular basis.

Once you know that, then you’re going to be able to say, “Spending this many hours every week answering emails and answering the same questions over and over again is a huge time suck.” For you, that would be the very first thing that you’re going to want to outsource, to get help with your email, even if it’s just five hours a month that an assistant can handle those questions.

And she could be working on setting up an FAQ for you, which will cut down your costs because it’s not going to take her as much time to say, “Here’s the answer, go to the FAQ.” So it’s not going to be a lot of back and forth.

Plus, as you train your people to look through the FAQ and look for the answer to their question first before contacting your assistant, then that’s going to save them time, and it’s going to save you time and money. That is the thing that would be for you.

That’s not going to be the same thing for everyone.

Everyone’s Business Model is Different and What Everyone Needs to be Outsourcing is Going to be Different

For instance, if you have an amazing popular Facebook page and you spend a lot of time figuring out a content calendar, what to post, looking for cool quotes and content, organizing everything, and that takes up a lot of your time, time that you would love to spend creating new products and programs to serve that amazing audience, but you can’t because you’re stuck trying to keep up with all of the day to day that is required of you to keep that Facebook page hopping and keep people interacting and engaged, that means that’s something that you could be outsourcing. That could be your first thing to outsource. That may be where you hire a VA for five hours a month to outsource that for you.

The Average Cost for a Skilled and Experienced VA in the U.S. is at Least $25/hr.

Of course, you can outsource overseas for $5 an hour, but then you have a huge time difference and you have the language barrier and there could be a lot of training. You could look into doing that for outsourcing, but I recommend that you invest a little bit more and find someone locally or at least in the U.S. or Canada where there is not that language barrier and such a huge time difference. That’s something to consider. I’ve found that to be about the average range for a VA, someone who could answer email, who could manage all that content for your Facebook page.

If you’re looking at five hours, that’s $125 per month. But, here’s the thing. What is your hourly rate actually worth? Is it worth you for you to be working on $25 an hour tasks, or is it better for you to be focusing more on marketing, connecting, creating, and doing those high value tasks as opposed to being stuck those day to day $25 an hour tasks.

FREE Calculator for Entrepreneurs to Help You Determine What Your Time is Actually Worth!

Once you have that, you’ll be able to say “my hourly rate is $125 hour, why am I working on a task that is a $25 an hour task – it’s better to outsource.” Your hourly rate is $125, so you would take $25 of that and pay someone else, you’re still earning $100 an hour so it makes sense.

If your yearly income is still pretty low, then maybe you want to look at finding those VAs who are charging less because they’re just getting started in their business, they’re looking for experience, they’re looking for testimonials, so they do charge less. It means that there is going to be a lot more training involved on your end, a lot more back and forth, but you could also be really helping someone and grooming them, I guess that’s the word I’m looking for, to really grow with you and your business.

You’re grooming them to work in your business, you’re training them how to do all this stuff in your particular business. Again, that’s a lot more time investment from you to go that route, but it’s definitely an option when you’re just getting started and your budget is low and you figure out that your hourly time isn’t worth that much right now.

I want you to go and check out the calculator, it’s really neat. Go to WhatYourTimeIsWorth.com and there’s some great information on the download page. You can watch the video that recaps how it works, and then you can use the calculator. Just type in your numbers, hit calculate, and you can see what your hourly time is worth and whether or not it makes sense to start outsourcing. You deserve and you should be focusing on those tasks that are really growing your business instead of spending hours and hours finding content to share on Facebook or whatever it is that you have tracked is sucking up so much of your time.

Again, you want to make sure that you’re tracking your hours, look at where all of your time is actually going, and then those are the things that you are going to want to outsource before anything else. Then over time, of course, you can add more and more, grow, and do all those wonderful things. For now, I would focus on that, even if it’s just for five hours a month. $100-125 per month is totally worth it to buy back those five hours for yourself.

Imagine if you had those extra five hours. If you sat down for five hours straight and did nothing but worked on creating a new product or program, how awesome would that be? How much money could you turn around then and get back from those five hours by selling that new product or program and really being of service to your audience?

They want that stuff from you. If you’re not creating it, they’re not going to get it and you’re not going to be able to be of service to your audience because you are so stuck in doing the little tasks that are time consuming. They have to be done, but there are so many wonderful assistants out there who would love to work with you, would love to support you in your business.

I want you to think about everything that I said here and just get started. Start somewhere. Just start tracking your time and your hours and see where things stand at the end of a week and go from there.

I hope that helps you in figuring out what to outsource first if you don’t have a lot of money. There’s no specific answer or specific thing that I can tell you, because everything is going to be different. Everyone’s business is going to be different, what people are spending their time on is going to be different.

Definitely make a plan to start sooner rather than later, and if you start small, it really doesn’t have to cost a lot 🙂 I started out with a $50/month budget. I gave up takeout food & coffee, and looked at where I could cut household costs (such as looking at my cable bill at that time and cutting it down the bare min, and eventually bundling, etc.)

I learned the hard way that it’s better to create a plan that your business can grow into, rather than waiting until your business outgrows your current systems. Cause when you reach that point, you’re sooo burnt out and overwhelmed from working all that time, that you just want to quit rather than keep going. And it’s really hard to get motivated and figure out what to do when you’re at that place.

Create your support system now – again, start small, and as your business grows, keep growing your support system 🙂 <3

FREE DOWNLOAD

NOTICE: ALL THE CONTENT ON THIS WEBSITE IS MEANT FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY.

Legal Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to accurately represent our programs and it’s potential. The testimonials and examples used are exceptional results, don’t apply to the average purchaser, and are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results. In fact, no guarantees are made that you will achieve results from our ideas and techniques in our material. Each individual’s success depends on his or her background, dedication, desire, and motivation. As with any business endeavour, there is an inherent risk of loss of capital and there is no guarantee that you will earn any money.